TV Tropes has tons of story tropes, from “badass and child duo” to “deceased parents are the best.”
Let’s pick some, vote on the best ones, then use them to write a story!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we write a story on random story tropes taken from the popular website TV Tropes.
Watch the process here, or scroll down for what we wrote.
Chat voted that we write a story with these four tropes:
And here’s what we came up with:
Simon never called himself a “hair stylist,” he preferred the term “lock-smith.” In fact, he liked it so much that’s what he called his salon: “The Lock-smithery.” It made it sound manlier, stronger, and he felt like he was tempering the heads of his customers, transforming blunt blondes and rusty redheads to their shining, sharpened potential.
The only problem was, he couldn’t speak to any of them. Ever since first grade, Simon was incapable of speaking to women. It didn’t matter if they were his classmate asking for a glue stick, his teacher asking him how fast Mr. Wunder could fly in science class, or even his mom trying to have a conversation about which brand of Mr. Wunder breakfast cereal he wanted. No matter what, Simon’s throat would close up, and instead of words, choking sounds would come out along with a very small amount of spit.
But it was only women! Simon had no problem talking to guys, and whenever they came into his salon, he would chat up a storm about last night’s game, or whatever crimes Mr. Wunder had put a stop to recently. When it came to women customers though, he was so silent that the muzak through the salon’s speakers was practically deafening.
Ironically enough, his silence was something his women customers loved about him — apparently they weren’t fans of the typical annoying small talk. Before Simon knew it, he was inundated with them from open to close almost every day, spending most of his waking hours in silence.
Usually that wasn’t a problem. Until Emma came into his salon.
She worked next door to The Lock-smithery, at Beats and Meats, a sandwich and music shop where Simon would usually get his lunch. There was just something about the way she would smile at him when she took his order of a bread and butter sandwich with a dab of mayo that set his face on fire. She was the only breadista who didn’t laugh when he held up his notebook with his order written on it.
From the start of watching her construct his sandwich, to having it slapped on his palm from her fingers, he wished he could say a single word to her. Yet all he could manage was a nod of thanks, and then try his best to not look creepy in the corner table, while munching away as he snuck glances at her dancing to the beats behind the counter.
Yet now Emma was coming into his domain. Simon felt his throat close even tighter than usual. Not even a straw would be able to work its way down his gnarled esophagus.
He expected her to take a ticket from the dispenser — a very valuable tool when Simon couldn’t talk to most customers — but to his shock, Emma marched right up to his counter and slammed her hands on the surface.
“Simon,” she said, staring right at him. Before Simon could even get over the surprise of her knowing his name, she uttered the most unexpected sentence possible. “I need you to come help me kill Mr. Wunderful.”
Even if Simon’s throat wasn’t currently the size of a spaghetti strand, he would be shocked into silence. Thankfully the rest of the salon was empty at the moment, so no one had to see his airy stammering. Except Emma, of course. But she didn’t seem to care. She just kept staring and talking.
“Listen, I know this is going to come as a surprise to hear, but Mr. Wonderful is not human. I know you were taught that he got his powers from getting hit by a meteorite, but it’s not true. He’s actually a Golorxiam alien posing as a supernatural human, just using this world to play out his weird fantasies!”
This was the most that a woman had ever spoken to Simon, and it figured that it had to be some crazy Mr. Wunderful conspiracy theory. Simon reached under the counter for his notebook, ready to write a reply to Emma that he was glad to see her, but maybe she should calm down a bit, when she grabbed him by the wrist.
If Simon thought his throat had tightened, it was nothing compared to the sudden stiffening of blood vessels in his arm.
“I know this sounds crazy,” Emma said. “But I need you to trust me. Come with me to Mr. Wunderful’s lair, and we can defeat him. I need you, Simon! I need a lock-smith.”
It seemed like Emma was asking him out on a date. Even with all the weird Mr. Wunderful pretenses, Simon had no intention of saying no. Not that he could say anything for that matter.
He glanced down at his schedule. There were a dozen appointments all to come in the afternoon. But they were all with women who weren’t Emma.
With his free hand, Simon grabbed a pen, crossed out their names, then nodded to Emma. She was aggressive, crazy, and Simon was definitely not going to pass up this opportunity.
“Great!” she yelled, gripping him even harder. “Let’s go.”
She pulled him out of the salon, with Simon having barely enough time to flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED on their way out. As they marched across the parking lot, Simon wondered where the heck they were actually going. The Southfield Strip Mall surrounded them on all sides, and Emma didn’t seem like she was heading toward her car or anything. She just kept going straight ahead, to the one side of the mall that no one ever went to: the side with Arby’s.
It was a ghost of a fast food restaurant. No one parked within fifty feet, no one inside. Only a few shadows of movement from the windows showing that maybe someone worked there, or maybe just the rats had lived there for so long that they evolved to be human size. Underneath the giant “Arby’s” sign and logo on the building was a faded banner that read “Arby’s: We got the microwaved lunch meat!”
Emma stopped in front of the Place Dreams Go To Die, then shoved her hand in her pocket and pulled something out. Simon was a little sad to have her let go of his arm, but he was distracted by what she was holding. It looked like some sort of remote control.
“That dastardly Mr. Wunderful,” she said, pointing the remote at Arby’s. “Using such advanced camouflage on these simple minds!”
She pressed a button, and the doors to Arby’s fizzled and hissed away into a swirling rainbow portal. Simon just looked at it, confused by what he was seeing, when Emma grabbed him again and yanked him toward it.
“We need to be careful,” she said. “Mr. Wunderful was smart enough to cloak his lair as something so foul no one would ever find it. There’s bound to be more traps inside.”
Simon just nodded as he was pulled along, wondering how Emma had made that portal in the first place. Maybe it was something she’d bought at Party Town next door in the strip mall?
Just a few feet away from the swirling barrier now, Simon expected Emma to stop and pull down the screen or whatever was projecting it. But she just walked right… through it. Bringing Simon along with her.
The portal was cool and liquidy, like stepping through a moist freezer. Simon’s throat unclenched for a brief enough moment for him to cough and blink from surprise, until he looked around, expecting to see signs advertising Arby’s “premium freezer buns.”
Instead, it was a messy laboratory, with machines whirring and blinking all along the walls. Pasted over most of the devices were magazine and newspaper clippings, along with printouts of websites, all depicting Mr. Wunderful having done some sort of amazing thing. The more Simon looked around, the more posters he saw. Not only on the machine walls, but also piles of them on the ground, taped to the ceiling, and even a few blowing through the air too.
Before Simon could ask Emma what was going on — and by ask he was going to just gag out some gassy whines — there was a metallic clang and a cry from beside him.
“Crap!” came Emma’s voice.
Simon brushed away some Mr. Wunderful posters that had blown by his face, and saw that Emma was trapped inside a steel cell. Her hands were wrapped around the bars, and it was small enough that she couldn’t even stand all the way inside it.
Now Simon was starting to panic. What had seemed like an innocent date at first was now suddenly turning into a weird, Mr. Wunderful-themed BDSM dungeon. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that kind of commitment yet.
“Simon!” Emma yelled, rattling the bars. “I thought that jerk might’ve set something up like this. It’s a trap, designed to catch any Golorxiams who saw through his ruse. That’s why I needed you to come, to break me out with your locksmith skills!”
Simon just stared at her silently. Even if he could speak, he would have no idea what to say right now.
“I know, I know,” Emma said, rolling her eyes. “Yes, you figured it out. I’m a Golorxiam too. I was sent here years ago to destroy your planet, but then I discovered meatball subs and couldn’t bring myself to do it. Mr. Wunderful was sent after me, and now with him making such a ruckus, it’s only a matter of time before they send someone serious to finish the job. So locksmith me out of this cage, and let’s stop his stupid shenanigans!”
Simon just blinked at her. This was going beyond a funny kink at this point. He needed to say something, even if he couldn’t speak.
Then a booming voice crashed from behind him.
“Well, well!” it bellowed through the lab. “Looks like you finally came, Emmaxtragortalogn!”
Mr. Wunderful himself strutted into view, complete with bulging biceps, glutes, and a skin-tight white suit and mask over his eyes. Simon had never seen the man in person before, and he was struck to awe by his powerful aura alone.
Emma glared at him through her bars. “Nice to see you too, Wundorminiuma. I’m here to put a stop to your playtime. Thanks to your stupidity, the Golorxiams are going to notice Earth in no time and actually destroy it.”
“No matter to me,” Mr. Wunderful said. “I’m just enjoying the time that I have. Once they decide to blow up my playground, I’ll go to another world and start over again. I think I’ll try the name Mr. A-man-zing next time. What do you think?”
“I think you’re an idiot!” Emma yelled. “How can you not care about destroying Earth? It’s home to meatball subs, party hats, and Taco Tuesdays!”
Mr. Wunderful shrugged. “I’m sure the next world will have just as many Wunderful things.”
Emma shot a look over to Simon and yelled for him. “Quick! Unlock my prison, and I can take care of him!”
Simon had no idea what was going on, much less how to open up an alien jail cell. He turned to Emma to tell her, but when he looked over, Emma was no longer there.
It was an Emma-sized centipede, dripping neon-green goo from her twitching mandibles.
Seeing that, something clicked inside Simon. A fear that he’d had his entire life, that had lived inside of him, finally erupted out of his body like a volcano expunging plumes of lava and ash into the sky.
“I’m not a locksmith!” he yelled to Golorxiam-Emma. “I’m a lock-smith, as in, someone who works with locks of hair!”
For the first time in his life, Simon had talked to a woman. He was only capable of doing it because the thing before him, an oozing human-sized centipede, was far less scary than any girl.
“Are you kidding me?” Golorxiam-Emma hissed with her clacking-claw mouth.
Mr. Wunderful gave a hearty laugh and brushed away his worries in the air.
“Well then, I suppose I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. I need to get ready to launch you back into space anyway, Emmaxtragortalogn. If you have any final words for your lover, speak them now.”
Mr. Wunderful strut his glutes away, and Simon ran up to the cage that Golorxiam-Emma was still trapped inside.
“I’m sorry,” Simon said to her. “If I’d known that you thought I was a real locksmith, and known that you were an alien, and was physically capable of talking to women, then I would have told you that I couldn’t help.”
“It’s okay,” Golorxiam-Emma said with a moist, dripping sigh. “My bad for taking you humans too literally, I suppose.”
Simon felt horrible for Golorxiam-Emma. He wished there was something he could do. But scanning his eyes around the room, there was nothing except Mr. Wunderful posters, and Emma’s discarded skin, complete with her smiling face, hair, pins, clothes….
Wait a minute.
Simon reached down for one of Emma’s hairpins, then shoved it into the metal lock on the cage.
“What are you doing?” Golorxiam-Emma asked.
“I may not be a locksmith,” Simon said. “But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this work in the movies before!”
Simon maneuvered the hairpin inside the lock, jiggling it this way and that, not knowing if the clicks he was hearing were good or bad. All he heard in his head was the music from Beats and Meats, imagining Emma swaying to them in his head and he moved the hairpin in rhythm with the wonderful memories.
Clack. The lock fell open.
“Simon!” Golorxiam-Emma cried out, spraying ooey-gooey goop all over his face. “You did it!”
She wrapped all one-hundred of her pointed arms and legs around him, and Simon did the same with his two fleshy ones. He’d never been able to do something as terrifying as hug a woman before, but embracing this Emma-centipede felt completely natural.
“Go!” she said, pulling away from him. Simon shook his head.
“No. I want to help. I want to stay with you!”
“You can’t, Simon,” Golorxiam-Emma said sadly. “Wundorminiuma can’t stay here alive. And neither can I. We’re both a danger to your beautiful world.”
Before Simon could protest, Mr. Wunderful’s voice boomed again.
“How did you escape!” he yelled, crashing into view. “I’ll have to take care of you myself, then!”
Simon made a move to intercept Mr. Wunderful, hopefully somehow stopping his super-strength and super-speed from hurting Golorxiam-Emma. But as soon as he put his limbs into action, Golorxiam-Emma used all one-hundred arms of strength to shove Simon away from her, making him stumble back into the portal.
“Thank you, Simon,” came her voice as Simon felt himself slowly sucked back through the cold barrier. Golorxiam-Emma’s body shone white, giving off powerfully bright rays even stronger than the sun. “I consider you an honorary Golorxiam too.”
As soon as Golorxiam-Emma exploded, destroying Mr. Wonderful and his entire lab, Simon fell through the rest of the portal, collapsing back into the Arby’s parking lot. There was no more portal in the doorway, just the stained glass doors and sun-bleached logo. Beneath him, Simon felt the ground tremble slightly, and the “microved meats” banner burst into flames, disintegrating to nothing.
Slowly, Simon stood back up, trying to process everything he’d just been through. But above it all, above the aliens and above killing Mr. Wunderful off, there was only one thing on his mind.
Alone, he marched over to Beats and Meats, wrote down his order for the new breadista, then took it and sat down at his favorite corner table. He unwrapped the sandwich, pulled it in half, and slid one of them across the table to the empty chair, where Emma would sit.
“It’s a meatball sub,” Simon said to her. Even if she was an imaginary woman, it was still the first one he’d ever spoken aloud to. “I’ve never tried it myself, but since you like it, I’m sure it’s great.”
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Featured image: Pakutaso